Everything is in the question: we’ve all heard, during the pandemic, or at other times, of planes flying without any passenger to keep their slots and bet on future purchases of plane tickets to remain competitive. If many people decided to all of a sudden stop flying, what would it change in terms of the number of planes taking off? Would it be an effective solution to reduce the impact of the travel/flying industry? Thanks in advance!
EDIT: thanks a lot for all your answers and examples, this is very interesting, you’re the best! <3
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Maybe others have mentioned but there’s other reasons why airlines fly empty flights. One could be that just because a flight from say SEA-JFK Is empty, the return flight or wherever else the aircraft is scheduled to go next out of JFK could be full.
A other reason, at least in the US, for a flight to operate empty is it could be an EAS (essential air service) route which is a route thats subsidized by the government that operate to remote airports that don’t have Amtrak, Greyhound, or other public transportation services in the area so they pay airlines to fly into those towns as a service to the public. If airlines don’t fly those routes, they don’t get subsidized for them.
As others have said, gate space is like gold for airlines. Theyre all competing for more gate space and they’ll keep flying regular routes in off-seasons that don’t have much demand at that time as they know the demand will shortly return.
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